New interview with David Cronenberg for Le Monde and THR

Cannes: ‘Maps to the Stars’ Director David Cronenberg on Indie Films and Portraying Hollywood (Q&A)

“I’ve never lost sight of why I’m making films,” says Canada’s wizard of weird as he reflects on his career, and his long history with the festival.

Canadian director David Cronenberg is no stranger to Cannes, having received the Carrosse d’Or lifetime achievement award in 2006 and a special jury prize in 1996 in addition to having had five films in competition, including his latest, the Robert Pattinson starrer Maps to the Stars, screening May 19. It is his first feature set in Hollywood, though considering the breadth of Cronenberg’s imagination, it is not apt to be a Hollywood like any seen previously onscreen.

The 71-year-old director, whom Martin Scorsese has described as a cross between cinematic surrealist Luis Bunuel and macabre painter Francis Bacon, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about his Canadian roots, his preference for an R rating and why it takes so long to make “difficult” films.

Many think of you as an American director, but you are Canadian and have shot practically all of your movies in Toronto. How did that happen?

It’s funny, but some people would think of me as a Hollywood director, for whatever reason. I’m definitely not that. Part of what I do, and sort of the rhythm of my filmmaking, involves co-productions between Canada and Europe. Once you do that, you’re committed to shooting a lot of the film in Canada or Europe, so there’s a pragmatic reason for shooting [in Toronto]. I also have a base of talented people that I work with consistently; I don’t want to abandon them for the latest “hot” person in that field. Then you have the nature of Toronto: I often think of it as a character actor who can play many different roles. In the 1970s, a lot of people got upset because Toronto would often be shown as somewhere else — as if that was a bad thing. But in the world of moviemaking, that’s a great thing.

Maps to the Starswas shot mostly in Toronto, with only five days on location in Los Angeles. Toronto often doubles for New York or Chicago but rarely L.A. How did you pull it off?

It is tricky. We knew we had to shoot in the summer, and honestly, it was palm trees. There are places in Toronto that look strangely like places in L.A. — there’s some very modern houses and architecture. Most of the Toronto shooting took place in a modern hospital or in private residences — that was doable. [We had to] put a bunch of palm trees in the garden, and it worked very well. I’ve been told many times by friends in L.A. that you could not tell the film wasn’t shot entirely in L.A. But those five days were crucial, and [it] was really fun. You know, not too many feature films are being shot in L.A., outside of TV. And it was the first time I shot a film in the U.S. in my entire career.

You made Maps for a little more than $13 million. What is your approach to film financing?

Money can be neutral, and as long as the source of the money doesn’t involve giving up creative freedom, I don’t care where it comes from. In fact, I rather like that independent films are put together like Frankenstein: You get pieces from all over the world, and you stitch them together and hope it ends up being a living organism. That’s the financing. But creatively — obviously that’s one of the reasons you make independent films, for creative freedom. You don’t have studio interference. When I was making [2012’s] Cosmopolis, [Robert] Pattinson said to me, “I’ve never seen this before.” I said, “You’ve never seen what?” He said, “You just make all the decisions right here on the spot.” I said, “Yeah.” I mean, you don’t actually have to wait to get memos from the studio. He said he’d never been in a situation where the director did what he wanted, without consultation. I said: “You know, it’s just us making this movie. There’s no one else — there’s no Big Brother.”